


Professionalism (Or The Lack Thereof)

by Spoon888



Series: Twitter Warm Up Prompt Fills [21]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Assassination attempts, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Loud And Unhealthy Relationships, M/M, POV Outsider, Property Damage, Semi-Public Sex, Soundwave Heroic Attempt At Remaining Professional, Walking In On Someone, because no one else will, twice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 08:48:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30002352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spoon888/pseuds/Spoon888
Summary: Soundwave has regretted his career choices for four million years, and counting.
Relationships: Soundwave/A Vacation, implied Megatron/Starscream
Series: Twitter Warm Up Prompt Fills [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1719604
Comments: 15
Kudos: 145





	Professionalism (Or The Lack Thereof)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fascinationex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/gifts).



Soundwave knew the cycle wasn't going to be a particularly productive one the second he stepped into the Command Centre and _felt_ as much as heard the _twang_ and _snap_ of an electro-crossbow firing an arrow bigger than Ravage at him. 

Years of carefully honed vigilance and a keen instinct for self-preservation were to thank for him freezing in place so the electrically charged projectile whooshed past him, only grazing the front of his armour, to imbed itself into the terminal behind.

A beat passed, and it exploded. Heat flared. Flaming chunks of metal and plastic sprinkled across Soundwave's shoulders. He stared at the smouldering remains of the terminal scattered about the room and the crater the explosion had left in the decking. 

"Soundwave, you idiot!" Starscream popped up out of his hiding spot behind a monitor and slung the crossbow over his shoulder, his frustrated voice shouting over the shrieking of smoke alarms. 

Soundwave hadn't noticed their annoying blare until then. The sound had somehow mingled with the ringing in his audials. 

"That wasn't meant for _you_!" Starscream snarled. 

Soundwave stared at Starscream, calculating the benefits and drawbacks of drawing his own weapon and shooting him in return. It would certainly provide something of a cathartic release, but there was the risk of further equipment damage. Many millennia spent provoking Megatron meant Starscream had gotten rather good at _ducking_. 

"Starscream; warned several times over his unauthorised use of experimental weaponry," he settled for a firm reprimand instead, satisfied that it should have almost the same affect. 

It didn't. Starscream straightened to his full height behind the monitor pulled a mocking expression. "Oh _please_. Those rules don't apply to me."

Soundwave was about to point his finger at the recalcitrant seeker and reproach him further, when the _size_ of menacing weapon on Starscream's shoulder caught his optic. The massive electro-crossbow was completely unsuited for a seeker of his stature. Soundwave was surprised the recoil hadn't knocked Starscream off his feet.

"That is not regulation size," Soundwave warned. "Dispose of it." 

"Dispose of it?! Are you mad? This is an _antique_ ," Starscream told him snobbishly, patting the weapon's side fondly. "I thought it more fitting, you see, that Megatron should meet his end by an age-mate. But you've seen fit to ruin that for me too."

He took the crossbow down and tossed it to the floor in a strop. 

"You won't always be around to protect him, _Soundwave_ ," he threatened, leaning in as he paused Soundwave by, flicking his wing forward to try and clip his shoulder with it. 

Soundwave turned on the spot to follow Starscream's path, unsure of which issue he should address first; the blatant (failed) assassination attempt, the property destruction, the improper weapons disposal, or this frequent misconception Starscream believed that Soundwave was willing to jump between Megatron and a bullet. 

Megatron's dense armour was far better suited to taking blaster bolts than Soundwave's was. The idea was illogical. 

And yes. He had scuppered Starscream's murderous plots on several occasions -but a startlingly high number of those incidents had been an accident. 

"Query; when do you intend to rectify the damage to the terminal?" Soundwave gestured to the smoking hole in the corner of the Command Centre. 

Starscream looked over his shoulder and rolled his optics, disinterested. "Do I _look_ like a labourer?" 

Soundwave refrained from voicing what profession he thought Starscream looked best suited for. 

* * *

  
Since Starscream had destroyed the security terminal and Scrapper claimed to be "too hungover" to rectify the situation, Soundwave was forced to collect his intelligence reports in person. 

Their underwater headquarters wasn't large by the measure of most standard Cybertronian military bases, but the journey between the Command Centre and the intelligence office where Ravage spent the day shift ended up taking Soundwave over two hours to walk- due to unforeseen operational requirements.

The ordeal began with a flood in the west security corridor, produced by a leak in the exterior bulkhead of the deck above. The leak had existed for five days. After a quick investigation, Soundwave learned that Skywarp had signed the relevant maintenance forms confirming that he had had the leak 'seen to' four days ago.

Despite this, the bulkhead was still steadily leaking seawater, and the corridor was still flooded. Soundwave also learned, after speaking with an exhausted Ramjet, that four days ago, Skywarp had set the Conehead trine the task of bailing out the flooded corridor with small plastic buckets. And informed them that they weren't allowed to leave until they'd bailed out _all_ the water. 

But _hadn't_ fixed the leak causing it in the first place.

There were two possible explanations; either Skywarp was even stupider than Starscream's last employee appraisal implied, or it had been an attempt at a cruel prank. Possibly, it was both. 

Soundwave dismissed the Coneheads and sent Skywarp a memo informing him that he had been reassigned to exterior bulkhead barnacle duty as punishment. He then pinged Scrapper's gestalt (again) asking for assistance. 

' _What the ---- don't you ----ing understand about being ----ing hungover, you ----face?!'_ was the response he received (edited to remove the expletives, of course). 

Steadily losing patience, Soundwave elected to fix the leak himself, turning back the way he'd come and heading towards one of the storage rooms, just to the left of the first repair bay. He waved a hand over the door controls, only for it to respond with a negative tone. 

Confused, he entered his override code. But again, the door would not open. It appeared someone had locked it from the inside. 

He knocked. 

There was a frantic scurrying sound from within, followed by a _bang_ and thunderous series of crashes. The carnage felt endless. Soundwave took a wary step back when glass broke and someone shrieked. 

After a full minute of madness, things finally fell silent, suspiciously so. Wary of traumatising himself, Soundwave kept his mental shields up so not to catch any stray thoughts. 

It was to no avail. The lock disengaged and the door rolled open to spit out a dishevelled and decidedly grumpy Megatron. 

Soundwave backed up quickly to avoid being bowled over as Megatron stormed out, furiously brushing pieces of glass and loose bolts from his shoulders. His lips were swollen. His helmet was askew. Certain ... _other_ armour plates were also askew. He was covered in scratches and bites- 

Soundwave quickly averted his gaze. 

"I found it!" 

Things took a turn for the worse when Starscream came stumbling out after Megatron. Breathless and flushed and clutching a blank data-pad in his hands, he smiled with unconvincing innocence as he wiped at a telling smudge on his cockpit.

He brandished the data-pad insistently. "I found the ...the _data-pad_ you were looking for, Megatron." 

Megatron scowled and snatched it from his second's hand without looking at him or Soundwave. "Thank you," he said stiffly. 

"It's such a mess in there, Soundwave." Starscream complained, trying to distract from the any questions Soundwave might have as to what they'd been doing in the supply room with the door locked -asides from looking for a data-pad they didn't need. "No wonder it took us so long to find the ...to find this data-pad that we needed! Clean this up, won't you." 

He didn't wait for a response, awkwardly sidestepping around an equally awkward Megatron to make a quick escape.

As Megatron watched the seeker walk (run) away, Soundwave took the opportunity to glance into the destroyed supply room. Half the shelves had been broken and their contents were scattered and broken all over the floor. 

"Soundwave," Megatron distractedly thrust the data-pad he apparently didn't need after all at him. "My comm will be offline for the next hour, or two. As will Starscream's. We have a... matter of great importance to discuss. In private. We're not to be disturbed under any circumstances. I trust you can keep things in order until I return?" 

Soundwave stared silently. 

"Excellent," Megatron squeezed his shoulder and took off after Starscream at an undignified speed. 

* * *

The supply room and leak taken care of, Soundwave made it to the security office only to find it deserted. Ravage had left a note on the desk that, thanks to clumsily, un-dexterous paws, was almost completely illegible. Soundwave attempted to decipher it for several minutes before deciding that unless Ravage had been writing exclusively in Egyptian hieroglyphs, it was a lost cause. 

He checked his chrono and realised with a wave of exasperation that he had wasted an entire morning on menial tasks. And to worsen his situation, he had mere minutes left until Megatron and Starscream were due to end their 'meeting' and rejoin the general Decepticon populace, at which point, productivity would decrease a further forty percent.

To make matters even worse, there was a war council scheduled for the mid afternoon. Soundwave wondered if he could have it pushed back to the evening.

Allowing Megatron any opportunity to make sensitive military decisions so soon after his 'meetings' with Starscream was detrimental to the cause and often increased the risk of loss of life. Soundwave liked to ensure that there was a buffer of at least three hours for Megatron's inflated sense of masculine overconfidence to return to manageable levels. 

He changed course for Megatron's on-duty office, a small, rarely used room connected to the back of the throne room. Megatron used it exclusively for his top secret meetings with Starscream so there was no where else they would be. Soundwave already had the perfectly reasonable excuse that the intelligence reports were late (thanks to Ravage) and it would be more practical to hold off on the war council until they were better informed to make their decisions. 

He passed the throne and reached the door hidden behind it, checking his chrono again to ensure he wasn't too late. 

But he was early, it seemed. Or -more likely, because his timing was never off- _their_ meeting had overrun by some time. 

The bulkheads for the on-duty office were thicker, with better soundproofing than those for the supply room, but Soundwave could hear that they were still inside.

It didn't sound much like a meeting. It sounded more like they were moving furniture around. At intervals, Megatron told Starscream to 'take' something. Soundwave also thought he overheard Starscream asking Megatron if he was going to come. Presumably, to some event? 

After several painful minutes of this, Soundwave realised they weren't going to be done anytime soon. It didn't solve the problem of the war council, which was going to have to be moved back anyway. At this point, it was either going to take place in the middle of the night, or tomorrow. 

He hoped it was tomorrow. 

He left the throne room, informing the relevant parties of the change in schedule via comm -to which the hungover Constructicons rejoiced at the extra hours they now had to sulk in their quarters before they were expected to face the horrors of the base's fluorescent lighting. 

Retreating to his own quarters was sadly not part of Soundwave's own day.

He realised that if Starscream was going to be too busy _praying loudly_ with Megatron in the back office all cycle, it was probably down to him as next in the command chain to ensure the feckless seeker's duties were taken care of in his absence. 

Thankfully, due to both Megatron's blatant and bizarre favouritism, and Starscream's sickening laziness, the Decepticon Second in Command had very few individual duties to attend to. Just an evening patrol with his own trine. 

Seeing as Soundwave could not fly at the pace of a supersonic jet, and Skywarp was still de-barnacle-ing the outside of their base, Thundercracker would be going alone. Realising it was less than ideal to send a lone seeker into hostile territory after sundown, Soundwave offered him an extra blaster. For his protection. 

It didn't much impress Thundercracker. 

"Would it really be that much of a big deal if there wasn't an evening patrol?" Thundercracker asked, after reluctantly accepting the extra blaster. 

"Patrols; vital," Soundwave reminded him. 

"If they were _that_ vital, Starscream would be here," Thundercracker argued. 

"Operational requirements; unavoidable. Starscream cannot be present," Soundwave explained, trusting that Thundercracker would understand because Thundercracker was one of very few Decepticons who was intelligent enough to be reasoned with. 

But Thundercracker laughed humourlessly, subspacing the blaster. "Operational requirements," he muttered under his breath. "That's a fancy new way to say 'Megatron's libido'." 

Soundwave, for the sake of his sanity and his continued working relationship with Megatron, chose not to hear that. 


End file.
